Valve is “de facto” monopoly, bit the actual monopoly potential is in Microsoft hands. Microsoft is for PC gaming industry what Google is for the web browser one. Sure, there may be other cool web browsers, but it’s Google that (through Android base) decide whic web browser will be delivered with the next billions of Android mobile device: some elderly people on smartphone don’t even know what is a web browser (“oh, you mean when I Google? I don’t know: I just Google”).

All future new PC will be sold with Microsoft Store and Xbox junk ware: Microsoft has been exceptionally shitty for not being the actual monopoly in the PC gaming industry. But that’s a very feeble protection: break Valve business is just a mandatory “security update” away to happen. They can break Steam little by little (such as suggested by Tim Sweeney) or just a big blow by sheer monopolized manipulation (such as Google not allowing adblockers to chrome to feed their advertising business)

Very smart. You learned how to repeat words written in books. You’re probably very proud of yourself.

You still don’t know what a monopoly is, however, considering this is a discussion about Valve and Steam.

But keep trying.

I’ve been gaming on Linux for a year now and I have (and run) way more games from GOG than Steam.

Historically I avoided Steam because of the whole “you don’t own the games, you just license them at full price” nature of the “phone home” validation they have for most games, so I had a much larger collection in GOG than Steam to begin with since I would only get from Steam the really interesting games which I wouldn’t find in GOG (plenty of games I simply did not buy because they were Steam only).

That said, running GOG games in Linux is as least as simple as Steam games, thanks to me using Lutris which does all the heavy lifting of properly configuring Wine and VKDX to run my games and even integrates with GOG to directly download the installers: in practice I have about the same chance of success with click-and-play installing and running a game in Linux from the Steam Store via the Steam App as I do from GOG via Lutris.

Then on top of that, because I’m a techie, I actually prefer Lutris + Wine because it’s so much more open for configuration than Steam and to figure out yourself how to run games for which there are no pre-made configuration scripts, such as pirated ones - for example, for one of my Steam games I couldn’t at all find a way to run the official version of the game in Linux via the Steam App, but I could get the pirated version of that game to run just fine via Lutris.

I even have a default setting in Lutris which will run my games inside a Firejail sandbox with networking disabled plus a bunch of other security settings, something I can’t do in Steam (were I can only do it for the entire Steam App, which won’t function with disabled networking).

I don’t need to keep trying, as this isn’t about me convincing you, but simply about me showing that you are wrong, which according to our like/dislike ratio I successfully did. You do not matter here. The academic truth does.

You put value in a like-dislike ratio and you think you can educate me?

You haven’t proven me wrong, you’re just another brainlet preaching to a choir of people who seem to be adamant at painting Valve as having a monopoly.

I mean, everyone has their preferred little dillusions, I guess, but an argument of popularity fallacy doesn’t make you right.

Microsoft tried to flip the switch years ago to kill anything outside the Microsoft store. That’s when steam released the original steam machines. Combined with general negative response to the messaging Microsoft has backed off, but they absolutely want to do it still.

You’re absolutely right, it doesn’t make me right. But that’s not what I said anyways, so I don’t think you did what you think you did with that.

You little radlib you, always confusing being a fan of a thing with that thing being good <3.

If you want an actual breakdown of the points where Valve uses its monopoly to manipulate the market. But I’m not sure you’re interested in that, since you haven’t even explained a single aspect of economy, but only been telling me ho wrong I am. Shows incompetency.

Unless games become something we truly own, steam is going to stay dominant. It’s more like a utility than a storefront. If you want to remove the dominance of steam you need to force a way to move libraries of games to other platforms.

Steam also got their monopoly the honest way by simply being the most consumer friendly option.

Steam isnt a single seller though. There is GOG, there is Microsoft store, and other wasys to purchase games.

Many of my favorite games don’t have drm, and you can just copy the install folder and boom, you own a copy

Right, and everybody buys their games over microsoft store. I don’t even know what the hell GOG is supposed to be. A monopoly is not characterized by no other players, it’s chracterized by a lack of seriously competing players. There is a serious difference. Chrome isn’t the only player. It’s still a monopoly with 70% of market share. It can move the market at will with little meaningful resistance.
If I go and sell lemonade, that doesn’t do anything to CocaCola.

They never tried to kill anything outside the Microsoft store. That’s just what Tim Sweeney and developers got fearful of and made a big fuss about (not saying it’s not worth making a fuss about, but they never announced they would do it). Microsoft did introduce more limited versions of windows that had sideloading disabled by default, but these were low cost versions of windows generally aimed at children and grandparents / non tech people, not at their gamer user base.

It’s a free market, right? Customers choosing what they prefer and all that? And then eventually the one that provides the best price-for-service ratio comes out on top? Something like that, right?

Yeah, that’s lead to monopolies before numerous times. That does not change the fact that a monopoly is still a bad thing as as soon as there’s no competitors, the monopoly can jack up it’s prices or keep them artificially high.

Assuming there’s up front costs you have to pay to be able to compete with that monopoly (infrastructure, marketing, etc), then you’re looking at losing a lot of money trying to break into a market where everyone defaults to your competitor. And in that time, your monopolistic competitor can afford to lose even more money to bleed you out of the market and then go back to high prices.

And that’s just the financial barrier, that doesn’t count networks effects and platform lock in that can prevent customers from leaving.

Monopolies are always a bad thing, and inherently need to be heavily regulated as they structurally break capitalism. Quite frankly any industry that creates walled-garden or relies on network effects needs to be heavily regulated as well, and steam checks all three of those boxes. There’s a reason that they are THE most profitable tech company per employee, and that’s not because they’re charging fair prices.

Yeah, who do you think is best equipped to examine the sales and financials?

Chrome/google is a monopoly because they actually pay to keep Firefox and apple Browsers running. Firefoxes major funder is google. This is so Google can claim they aren’t a monopoly.

Gog is the games store most people use if they don’t want steam. https://www.gog.com/en/games

From what I’ve seen and heard, probably not businessmen.

Yeah, but the store doesn’t actually tell you which is which when you’re looking to buy a new game, now does it?!

Further, will that copy of an install folder work if you copy it into a new machine? Maybe, but probably not (it depends on things like how the game handles missing registry keys and/or the graphics card changing whilst there’s already a shader cache for the previous graphics cards).

When you’re making a purchasing decision, if that factor is very important to you, Steam’s possibility that maybe it can be done in an unofficial non-supported way, but you don’t get told upfront if it does work, and you’re not sure if it will work if you change machines, doesn’t count as a real “I get to keep the game no matter what” feature - it’s a hack, that sometimes works, usually doesn’t.

In GOG that feature is standard.

news are suppose to have new information

But Steam isn’t a walled garden, or a monopoly.

Valve has done nothing that monopolistic corporations have done (i.e. Disney or Nintendo). They have kept themselves relatively small, private, and focused on providing one service really well.

Every other competition has only ever tried approaching what Valve does with Steam with shortcuts and quick money grabs.

It’s all fine and dandy to cry and complain about monopolies, but nobody even really tried. Epic’s store was, and still is, a laughing stock. That is what Valve is up against.

This wasn’t a “hey this is ok because you can sometimes do it in a jank way” comment, more of a “hey in case you didn’t know you can go make copies to preserve what you like” comment